The Joker: One of Literature's Greatest Villains

The Joker is unquestionably one of the greatest villain characters in history. I'm not raising a question with that intro, I'm taking that position: The Joker is one of the greatest villainous characters of all time.

Why do I say that?

The Joker was first introduced in 1940 so he's eighty years old. That's eighty years of regular and steady use by a whole team of professional writers experimenting with him, using him, and if they felt daring, innovating with him. Can you think of any other villainous character who's had that much time and attention devoted to polishing and perfecting him? There's Dracula, and Satan, can you think of any others? This results in the Joker going through a flurry of changes over the years being modified over time by popular culture in addition to individual writers innovating with his character. The Joker is generally portrayed as a genius level psychopath with a warped sadistic sense of humor. This was his original characterization during his introduction however from the late forties to early sixties, the Joker was rewritten as a harmless prankster in comics. This was due to mounting concern from parents and culture warriors that comic book violence was corrupting their children. As a defense against more active censorship from the government, DC comics voluntarily adopted the Comic Code in 1954. The Comic Code was a series of rules regarding story structure and visuals that had to be met before a comic could be published. One previously unofficial rule incorporated by the code is that no murder could be committed by a recurring villain, as this would make Batman look impotent in the face of crime and evil. The code resulted in a tamer, toned down Joker for 20 years and was also the form adopted by the original Adam West TV show where the Joker was played by actor Caesar Romero.

In 1973 the Joker returned to form, becoming once again a savage lunatic but the Joker was still used sparingly in comics and struggled to find his audience. He briefly had his own 9 issue comic run (simply titled: "Joker") that tried to thread the needle between making the Joker a terrifying psychopath and a character the readers could root for, however this ended predictably badly. The Joker as we now know him wouldn't really come into his own until the 1980s during what is known as the "Dark Age of Comics." At this point DC was becoming much more experimental and was willing to go into darker and grittier story lines. This was an understandably controversial decision at the time but at this point in history, the average comic book reader was no longer a child. Their primary market were teenagers and adults and they wanted darker and meatier stories. The Joker was the perfect character to deliver these types of dark narratives and in 1988 he cemented his new persona as an unrepentant monster by savagely beating the new Robin, Jason Todd, to death with a crossbar. It's difficult to overstate what a shocking develop this was. Although readers were aware that Todd could die (DC had asked readers to vote on whether he should live or die) this was still a very new situation for DC comics. The Joker hadn't just murdered some faceless bystander or minor character, he had killed a core member of the Batman family. This would have a lasting impact on future stories and how the remaining Batman characters interacted with their primary antagonist. It also served to justify increasingly forceful actions by many members of the Batman family. This put increased pressure on their relationships as they argued about how far they were willing to go to stop crime and protect innocent lives. This new approach to comic book stories gave the Joker a new lease on life. He became a singular villain that terrified everyone else in the DC universe. The Joker was in a league apart from any other fictional villain due to his unpredictability and malice. To quote the comic "Batman Underworld Unleashed": "When villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories." However there was one more missing piece to recreate the Joker as a truly timeless monster. He needed a philosophy, a goal he was working towards in order to become a fully fleshed out three dimensional character and he received one in 1988 in the famous comic: "Batman: The Killing Joke." The Killing Joke explores many sides of the Joker establishing his modern character with surprising depth for such a short comic. The Killing Joke firmly grounds the motivations and philosophy of the Joker in ways older stories had only hinted at. By the time of "The Killing Joke", the Joker is an absurdist and a nihilist. It's worth pointing out that part of the reason the Joker is so unique in literature is that he is the nihilistic archetype. Joker isn't based on any older literary or mythological characters because there is no prior absurdist or nihilistic archetype to inherit from. The Joker is an avatar of what was then new philosophical concepts; a fleshed out and animated archetype (or caricature) of absurdism and nihilism. Absurdism and Nihilism as coherent philosophical concepts date back only to the post modern philosophical revolution of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. The Joker is in essence, the embodiment of a brand new philosophy which only entered the public mind in the post world war 2 era. Before proceeding we should probably define what absurdism and nihilism actually mean as there is a lot of confusion about these topics. There is a lot of overlap between the two but basically they are a pair of philosophical hypothesis related to existentialism pioneered by such thinkers as Camu, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Absurdism is the philosophical belief that there is no "meaning" in the universe. While many other existential philosophies agree with this position, they also take a more optimistic tone by asserting that the quest for meaning in life provides meaning in and of itself. In other words, most variations of existentialism assert that man must create his own meaning in life and that this chosen meaning is as valid as any other. Absurdism rejects this idea. Absurdism is fixated on the concept of death and how it gives meaning to life (very much like the Joker himself). To an absurdist, death and the finite duration of life renders human activity meaningless. An absurdist believes that any meaning you have invented for yourself is made meaningless at the moment of your death and thus there wasn't much point to it to begin with. Absurdism takes the position that providing yourself with an invented meaning to life when you are unable to empirically locate a meaning, is very much like providing yourself with an imaginary friend when you can't acquire a real one: Your friend isn't real and therefore the relationship is not real and thus it's completely pointless. Nihilism is very much like absurdism but it becomes even more pessimistic. Unlike absurdism which allows for the possibility of transitory meaning to exist for a person during their lives, nihilists believe that no meaning is possible even temporarily and thus all choices are essentially meaningless. This philosophical approach helps to explain both the Joker's behavior and his fixation on death and killing. As a character the Joker has completely embraced idea of the absurd. His actions are always extremely logical and rational within the context of his stated goal. However his goals are utterly pointless and irrational because the Joker himself acknowledges no meaning or purpose to any action in the first place. The Joker's plans have no greater purpose beyond that he has chosen to pursue these goals and therefore he will pursue them. In some analyses the Joker is perceived by philosophers and literary critics as either Nietzsche's uberman or its deconstruction. The Joker is completely indifferent to contemporary morality and even contemporary rationality. He considers himself an artist, his medium is murder, and the world is his canvas. In many way he is the embodiment of the Nietzschean uberman as he is a man who has fully embraced his own vision of morality and seeks to communicate with the world through the universality of his "art."

However Nietzsche also raged against nihilism and would be nauseated by the Joker's blanket rejection of meaning. To be candid, Nietzsche never really explained how he expected his uberman's rejection of moral systems to lead to anything except nihilism, he simply asserted that the uberman would create a new reality beyond our previous one. The Joker may consider himself an artist but he does not create. To quote Alfred he really does just "want to watch the world burn." This is ultimate end of any nihilistic philosophy and why it remains a barren branch on the philosophical tree: nihilism does not create it just destroys. Thus the Joker is both the fulfillment of Nietzsche's premise and its literal deconstruction. At one point in the "Emperor Joker" story line, the Joker manages to steal literal godlike powers and rule over the universe. However he's unable to do anything with these powers except destruction. Even with the powers of a god he fails to achieve an act of creation and simply uses his power to set everything ablaze. In addition Joker fails the theoretical uberman test because he proves in this story that he still sees himself as a person in Batman's world rather than Batman existing in his world. Even with his godlike power he is unwilling and unable to destroy Batman. It's not a coincidence that the Joker comes into his own during the 1980s when the questioning of organized religion had finally reached saturation in American society and the post Vietnam generation began questioning things that had been considered sacrosanct. The Joker was a new archetype for a new age, an age where questions of meaning could no longer be assigned to "because God said so."

To fully comprehend the Joker there is only one gold standard we can refer to: Alan Moore's seminal classic the 1988 comic "Batman: The Killing Joke."

The story begins with Batman visiting Joker in Arkham Asylum and offering to help the Joker rehabilitate himself. Batman is aware that this "dance" he's performing with the Joker is inevitably going to be fatal and that sooner or later one of them must kill the other. Batman feels a need to make a real attempt to head this off before it gets that far. Unfortunately Batman discovers the man he's talking to isn't Joker and the Joker has already escaped Arkham to pursue a new scheme. Alan Moore reveals the Joker's backstory (or at least one of them) by portraying him as a struggling stand up comic who's trying to provide for his pregnant wife. Desperate for money, the future Joker agrees to help two goons rob a chemical plant he formerly worked at but during the planning he is informed that his wife and unborn baby died in a car accident. The Joker attempts to back out of the crime but the goons strong arm him into going through with it. During the robbery the Joker is cornered by Batman and accidentally falls into a vat of toxic chemicals which transforms his appearance into the Joker. The Joker's philosophy in the Killing Joke is essentially nihilism. He believes that anyone can be transformed into a lunatic just like him simply by experiencing a single bad day. Notably his conclusion is that choices and actions are irrelevant to an outcome because life is something that happens to you, not something you can control. In many ways this emphasizes the Joker as a twisted reflection of Batman who was inspired to become a hero by "one bad day" where he lost his parents in a senseless act of violence and is determine to ensure that no one else must suffer the way he did. The Joker on the other hand thinks that the world is so unfair and irrational that insanity is the only rational reaction to it. To prove his philosophy to the world, the Joker decides to torture Commissioner Gordon to the point of insanity because Gordon is the sanest man he can think of. This torture involves the Joker shooting his daughter Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) in the spine, permanently paralyzing her. The Joker then proceeds to show Commissioner Gordon a "Clockwork Orange" series of pictures of his horribly wounded daughter being molested by the Joker (There's a lot to unpack here in terms of female abuse and objectification but we'll hold off on that for my "Women in Refrigerators" blog in a few months). The Joker's plan fails and Gordon after being rescued by Batman insists that Batman bring the Joker in alive to prove that they were better than him (much to the Joker's irritation). Batman does bring Joker in alive and again offers to assist him in recovering, arguing that it's the better choice than one of them ultimately killing the other. In a surprisingly emotional moment, the Joker apologizes to Batman and claims it's much too late to save him. The comic ends on an ambiguous set of panels with readers having argued for decades about if the Batman has finally killed the Joker in the final frames. Attempting to provoke Batman into killing him also becomes a standard feature of the Joker's MO in the future. The Joker wants Batman to kill him because this proves his theory that anyone can be manipulated into becoming a killer. This drive is also related to Camu's "Virgin Suicide" where suicide is the ultimate embrace of the absurd and the meaninglessness of life. The Killing Joke's greatest influence had to be on Christopher Nolan's 2008 masterpiece The Dark Knight. The critically acclaimed role of the Joker is played by Heath Ledger. In this film we see the Joker as the very model of a nihilistic sociopath driven to teach a lesson to Gotham and Batman in particular. The Dark Knight is probably the best interpretation of Joker to date. He's revealed to be a genius level plotter and planner who despite this consistently behaves irrationally and is determined to teach Gotham to embrace the madness.

One of the best scenes in the movie occurs when the Joker "disguises" himself as a nurse to get into the hospital and visit Harvey Dent, the newly burned Two Face. The dichotomy between them essentially explores different systems of morality. Whereas Batman is determine to do the right thing, Two Face now believes that the only valid moral system is unfeeling chance, and the Joker believes in raw nihilism where no choices or decisions matter. In this scene the Joker attempts to manipulate Two Face into becoming another monster by claiming he didn't mean for his fiancee Rachel to die or for Harvey to get burned. Joker argues that he was in jail when it happened and he doesn't believe in plans anyway (he's lying on this point). As a show of "good faith" he even hands Harvey a gun and allows Harvey to put it against his head. Harvey responds that since the only fair way to make decisions is by chance, he will flip a coin that determines whether he shoots Joker or not. However look closely at what happens in this shot.

See the Joker's index finger? He's holding the hammer. Even if Harvey does pull the trigger, the hammer won't fall. He's giving Harvey a choice: kill the Joker and become a murder himself or spare the person who has ruined all these lives. It's a very simple choice because there isn't one. No matter what Harvey chooses it won't effect anything. This is the Joker's philosophy in a nutshell: Choice is illusionary.

To briefly touch on the 2019 Joker movie, I actually found it pretty disappointing. The acting and cinematography were both top notch but the script was lacking and the characterization was honestly pretty bad. The main character is just not the Joker. The Joker is a charismatic genius who's embraced his vision of the futility of life and views murder as an art form. The Joker in this movie does none of these things. He's certainly not a genius nor charismatic. He's also clearly mentally deficient and psychotic. How "crazy" the Joker actually is a matter of conjecture but he's very rarely been portrayed as self pitying and hallucinatory. This Joker is a broken man who just happens to work as a clown. Rather than adapting the modern DC characterization of the Joker, this is more of a "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" character in clown makeup. He kills for completely rational reasons: because he's angry at the victim or he wants revenge. This Joker is just an ordinary person who isn't accepted by "the system" and because it does not accept him, the system treats him cruelly. In many ways this Joker is a post modern version of Willie Loman from Death of a Salesman: an angry man who has been chewed up and discarded by the world but demands that the world acknowledge him as a man and acknowledge that he has value by virtue of being human. To be fair, this isn't a bad character but it's not the Joker. The movie is basically a fallback to the 1940s Joker who was just a psychopath with a gimmick but even this older Joker was extremely intelligent and charismatic; able to go toe to toe with Batman using his brains on numerous occasions. The movie's Joker is just not the character we expect in the modern age. Possibly they switched gears on the Joker's characterization to avoid comparisons with Heath Ledger's legendary portrayal but this resulted in a fairly flat character who doesn't deserve the name Joker. All that being true, one very instructive example of the Joker's characterization can be found in the 2019 Joker movie. After two old acquaintances visit Joker in his apartment he savagely beats one to death with a pair of scissors. The survivor, Gary, a midget cowers in a corner. To escape he has to reach the apartment door and that means he needs to walk right by the Joker. Joker tells him he can leave and assures him he won't kill him. Gary is clearly scared to try and takes a long moment weighing his options. Is he safer where he is or should he try to escape? Ultimately Gary decides to chance it and bolts for the door. He reaches it but Joker has chained the door shut and Gary is too short to unchain it. This is another classic Joker moment: whatever decision Gary made, it didn't matter.

However what could have been a brilliant setup is immediately defused when the Joker gets up and unlocks the door, setting Gary free with a kiss on the head because "you were the only one who was always nice to me." This is the antiJoker. Joker in this scene establishes that actions DO matter and Gary is being rewarded for his prior kindness. This is just not the way the Joker behaves. The Joker's massive penetration of our modern culture is likely a matter of timing. He exploded onto the scene at the same time society was reeling with new questions of meaning and existence and the Joker's freedom and revelry from meaning is very much a product of the time he came of age. The Joker is our new archetype and we can probably expect him to endure for centuries: A mythological symbol of the absurd and the meaningless.